I will let you know when I finish with my childhood dishes but it’s hard for me to stop as every now and again I must bring something that brings nice memories in. Christmas never fails to bring me beautiful memories so a dish like this is not only delicious food for stomach but food for soul too.
Our soul needs feeding too, so talking about and bringing up nice and positive things to feed our souls with will only bring us joy and happiness. Whatever these things are, they’re what life it’s all about. For me it’s reading, cooking and listening to others, helping them overcome hard moments and times in life, is what I do in my free time and I enjoy it tremendously. It gives me such an inner satisfaction, a real sense of peace, joy and happiness.
Of course being with my lovely family, spending valuable moments with my kids, hubby, talking to my brother and my parents it’s just the ultimate. I’m so fortunate! I’m fortunate to have all these in my life.
Coming back to this simple dish, I’ve made a few changes to what my mum used to make with it. Hers was pretty simple. Just the fruit and sugar.
I wanted to make this initially to introduce healthier snacking to my kids. They love food too and are willing to try new foods, they are adventurous with flavours which makes me super happy. I really wanted to introduce this apple dessert to them more to show them what kind of desserts I was eating as a kid so that they will compare with sweets and desserts we choose to eat nowadays.
Truthfully, I do not remember growing up with so many sweets. No way! Desserts were almost always homemade and since my mum never really enjoyed baking nor cooking that much desserts were a pretty rare occurrence. Turkish delight was something that I could say I had so much of as a kid. It was my favourite anyway, but that was soo good and soft those days and nothing like the one you find here now that tastes a little bit like soap.
The variety of desserts/sweets you could buy those days is nowhere close to the vast amounts of desserts available nowadays. The issue now isn’t so much the variety but rather the degree of processing involved and amounts of additives contained, some being super bad for us.
It’s great that although my kids are only young, they are old enough to understand the difference and they do opt for homemade stuff and prefer it. I’m lucky, I know!
I’m truly lucky my persistence is paying off but that’s because they have allowed it all to reach their ears and wanted to take notice of the teachings.
Persistence and consistency are ultimately the key I reckon. It’s all hard work but definitely worth the efforts.
I’ve started with making these beautiful apples just as my mother used to but then I felt the need or quite the urge I’d say to add things to the apples to not only make it all more versatile but also get better nutrition from them.
We’ve had these for breakfast a few times now, it is super easy to prepare, and provides a delicious start to any day. Here is another delicious apple and cranberries breakfast.
Realistically, this apple bake can not only make a superb breakfast but also a yummy and a lot healthier dessert any day in the year, no matter the season. Of course it would peahaps suit autumn and winter best since apples are at their strongest and in full season, but also having it hot/warm will definitely make it a beautiful cold weather warmer and a soul hugger.
If there is one thing that I could say I’m struggling with it’s having fruits for breakfast. It’s only because I always tend to fancy warm, cooked stuff and mainly savoury.
These baked apples make a really nice dessert or a snack especially when we want to watch the calories intake. I can’t think of a better time to have this but now around the festive period. Just plain perfect.
Let’s just get baking!
Baked apples with rye flakes honey and cinnamon
These baked apples stuffed with so many nice and healthy ingredients will make a truly healthy breakfast, a yumm dessert or awesome snack no matter whether is served hot or cold.
Ingredients
- 4 apples *
- 6 tbsp rye flakes
- 6 tbsp barley flakes
- 4 tbsp almond flour
- 4 tbsp brown sugar
- 30 g butter cold *
- 2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 4 tbsp sunflower seeds
- 4 tbsp honey or other syrups *
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 tbsp desiccated coconut
- 2 tbsp walnut toasted and chopped (optional)
Instructions
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Preheat the oven at 190°C/ 375F and take out an ovenproof dish.
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Wash and core the apples * (see recipe notes).
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Place the cored apples into the prepared oven dish, add one tbsp sugar into each apple cavity and set aside.
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Into a bowl, add the flakes, the salt, almond flour, desiccated coconut, the seeds, cinnamon powder and the nuts. Give it all a good mix. Add the butter and crumble this with the flakes mix until it becomes uniformly mixed.
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Fill up/stuff the apples with the mixture, drizzle 1 tbsp of honey or any syrup over each apple and place in the oven.
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Bake for 30-50 minutes depending on the apple sizes. Enjoy hot or cold 👌😋
Recipe Notes
* You may use any nuts and seeds you like. Other delicious twists you could give to this baked apple recipe can be adding raisins, dry cranberries, dry cherries orange juice, orange peel, rum essence (I love rum with apples it’s really good👌) rolled oats, or make the traditional crumbles with flour, sugar and butter)
* For a vegan option replace the honey with maple syrup, agave or dates syrup and the butter with any nut butter or coconut oil that is nice and solid.
* Feel free to use more butter if you wish.
* Add more sugar in the flakes mix if you wish, so if you decide to, do this at step 4. I personally do not like it overly sweet and if you feel this recipe is not reaching the level of desired sweetness you can always add more syrup or even some naughty but so nice caramel sauce when serving. Well, a scoup or owo of ice cream, a couple of spoons of creme fraiche, creme boolla boolla, some coconut whipped cream or some plain creamy Greek yoghurt are also some great ideas!😜
How to core the apple 🍎
Insert the tip of the knife to one side of the center stem of the apple. Push the tip of the knife into the apple at an angle and cut around in a circular way around the stem (about 1cm away from the stem) to carve out an even circle. This way the entire stem from the top of the apple will be removed.
Insert a teaspoon into the hole in the center of the apple and remove the remaining core including its seeds.
Be careful to not go all the way through to the other side of the apple. We need at least 1.5cm at the bottom of it to hold the sugar and the delicious filling.
